150 Seeley— Section of the Lower Chalk near Ely. 
IJ. On a Section oF THE LOWER CHALK NEAR ELy.* 
By Harry Suerny, F.G-.S., of the Woodwardian Museum, Cambridge. 
LY stands on a hill extending somewhat beyond the city 
as a ridge to the north; and a mile north-east of the 
Cathedral, at a spot variously named Roslyn or Roswell Hole, 
its flank is reached at a well-known pit, where the Kimmeridge 
Clay is dug for mending the river-banks; and the excavation 
shows some Boulder-clay and Chalk. What the relative posi- 
tions and relations of these latter deposits may be has been long 
disputed; some holding that the Chalk is there zz siti, let down 
by a fault; others maintaining that it is merely such a drifted 
mass, included in the Boulder-clay, as those which form so 
strange a feature in the Drift of the Norfolk Coast. f Professor 
Sedgwick has long been convinced that this latter view is a 
groundless hypothesis; for when the railway was made from 
Ely to Lynn, it exposed at about 100 yards off a section show- 
ing Kimmeridge Clay and Chalk side by side, and Boulder- 
clay between them; so the conclusion inevitably followed that 
there had been a great fault, letting down the Chalk for at least 
two or three hundred feet. This section was still to be seen in 
the spring of 1860, when I examined it. The faulted faces of 
both stratified formations were perfectly erect, parted by a 
column of Boulder-clay, some twelve feet wide, which from a 
distance looked like a basaltic dyke. 
Such were the known stratigraphical phenomena and infer- 
ences up to August, 1862, when, visiting the Roswell Hole, I 
discovered a section which, as exhibiting structures and relations 
not otherwise seen in this part of England, is here described. 
The pit is in form a long horse-shoe, the whole north side and 
curve of which offer an admirable exhibition of Kimmeridge 
Clay. ‘The south side shows at its terminal end Chalk, and at 
the part where it joins the curve characteristic Boulder-clay; 
and this is the side of the pit which claims special description. 
Though Ely stands on a slight rise, the country around is won- 
derfully flat; and though there is no difficulty in detecting the 
Shanklin Sands, an absence of escarpments renders it difficult 
in a country much covered with peat to detect even a rock so 
* This paper was read, February 16, 1863, before the Cambridge Philosophical 
Society. 
Tt The figures given in Sir C. Lyell’s ‘Elements,’ p. 129, are not included 
pinnacles of Chalk, but only reconstructed chalky drift, full of all sorts of rocks. 
Last summer I found a grand beulder SE. of Cromer, 180 feet long, and in shape 
like half a pear, fairly in the Boulder-clay. It was of soft Chalk; and the, flints 
were cracked, but less than those of Freshwater. 
